BTW, am I the only one thinking that Halloween is getting overdone to the point where the fun has been driven out of it? It's not yet excruciating like April Fools Day, where I lock my office door and keep my web browser closed until it's over, but give it a few years...
At least Talk Like A Pirate Day is still easygoing fun, but thanks to that interminable Flying Spaghetti business, the joy is being driven even out of pirates.
Say you have a 1000-byte file called MyDocument1.doc.vistalnk on your desktop. It points to the real MyDocument1.doc somewhere else on your system.
If you open the file up in XP, Word will be very confused...
I'm no Windows guru, but I do that all the time in XP, with no problem. (I do, don't I? Checking it... yeah, of course it works.) The only application I can recall that doesn't follow through "shortcuts" correctly is (brace yourself!) Lotus Freaking Notes. Everything else deals correctly with them, and I'm sure I'd have noticed if they didn't since Notes' misbehavior drives me absolutely nuts.
Like I said, I know nothing about Windows and therefore can't debate the subject, except to report what I see.
The Kansas school board needs to have a single mother assemble their curriculum! As has been documented here repeatedly, single mothers are exempt from copyright law, and attempting to restrain them from copyright violation is a felony!
I did that too, for a science fair project, and finished second to a project about prime numbers. (Summary: there are prime numbers, and you can't factor them by other numbers.) I would have been better off spending that time watching television.
There is something about people who say they never watch TV that makes me want to punch them.
Those people seem not to understand that the clichedness of bragging about not watching television outweighs any positive impression it makes.
Anyway. Not having read the book, but as I understand it from the review -- it seems perhaps unfair to criticize it for not reaching statistically meaningful conclusions. If the argument it's challenging is "Television is moronic and for morons and that's why everyone nowadays is a moron!", it seems like a reasonable counterargument. And it's not like said argument isn't made routinely.
I certainly appreciate the flexibility, but even for programmers, how much of that comes from having source code and how much just from having a modular UI and a general culture of throwing in configurable options? I've added a command-line option every now and then but how much difference does it really make?
Anyway, whatever the value for programmers, it's counterproductive to tell ordinary desktop users that that's one of the most important benefits for them.
Absolutely. A large part of the problem, I think, is that the noisiest and most prominent Linux "marketing" is zealots who have based their self-image on their choice of software. They represent it poorly because the benefit they get from Linux is not a benefit any, well, healthy person would recognize.
There seems to be this idea that people hate MS and/or Windows and are looking for any excuse to move to OSS (Lindows is a perfect example of this mentality). I don't think this is the case. I'm not looking for a reason to abandon Windows, I need a reason to move to Linux.
Exactly. The only line of Linux advocacy that's less convincing than "It's not worse than Windows any more!" is "You have the source code so you can fix things yourself!" Sane computer users choose the software they want, not the software they don't hate.
The article is actually pretty interesting, and worth reading as the completely-missing-the-point summary here doesn't do it justice.
I don't, though, buy:
It's like saying television programming cannibalizes each other which is why we only had four television networks. Well cable came on the scene and we now have 250+ channels of programming that blew a hole right into the side of that market space. You could say that most of those channels are crap, but there's an audience for every single one of those channels. I don't think the people running Home & Garden Network are in any way cannibalizing the Sci Fi channel's audience.
Is he kidding? Of course cable channels have cannibalized the broadcast networks! The 250th channel may not be taking viewers from the 249th, but channels 5-250 sure as hell took viewers from 1-4!
Hey, I spend enough posts pointing out that people here are mostly stupider than dirt -- faced with an unusually good batch of interview questions (as opposed to the usual "Why doesnt yuor game run on Lunix? Huh? HUH?") it seemed gracious to note it.
I'm relieved to see the stupider-than-dirt crowd is still around, though.
I swear, this must be someone shilling for Microsoft.
Well, at least that makes more sense than the guy modded above you who thinks this is someone shilling for Intel!
Anyway -- the test files are linked in his post. I don't have OO installed at work, but would someone with it and Office care to take a look at them, and move this discussion to facts?
Have Japanese largely stopped buying CRT televisions and monitors in favor of flat-screens? Given their space constraints, especially at home, I'd imagine it wouldn't take much for them to give up on tubes entirely.
(Note: I'm looking for replies based on experience with Japanese reality, not on anime. TIA...)
Presumably this is actually Marcel Gagne, best known for his excruciating French chef-themed columns? Consulting him on humor is like consulting the Slashdot editors on spelling.
Incidentally, writing introductory books like "Kiss the Blue Screen of Death Goodbye!" seems to me to be a dead end. Seething haters of Microsoft (and even they haven't seen a BSOD in five years) don't make up a significant share of Windows users, and pandering to that mentality seems counterproductive.
Sorry, do Wal-Mart and McDonalds really seem like companies that are likely to give hefty bonuses to their employees to buy a Prius? Good question, though...
Meanwhile, shouldn't employees at a motorcycle leathers maker ride, uh, motorcycles? Or does "motorcycle" nowadays just mean sticking an Orange County Choppers sticker on the rear window of your SUV and going home to watch TV shows about motorcycles?
On the off chance that "Delbruk" was actually a variant spelling by Watson, I checked the quote in the original -- nope. The Open Sources editors simply copied a block of text, misspelled Delbruck's name three times and then kept mispelling it elsewhere. And that's on top of the fact that their larger point is dragging James Watson in to support a vision of potluck communal science that's contrary to everything that motivates him in the book.
The real jewel in there, though, is:
Industry can have a negative impact on innovation. The Graphical Image Manipulation Program (GIMP) languished incomplete for a year at beta release 0.9. Its creators, two students at Berkeley, had left school to take jobs in industry, and left their innovation behind.
Curse that capitalism and its suppression of innovation! How dare companies offer jobs to starving open source developers and distract them from their coding!
Re:Let it be Known!
on
Open Sources 2.0
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Microsoft's complete denial of the Open Source phenomenon is almost amusing. The Apache web server has, at the time of writing, more than 50% of the web serving market according the Netcraft survey ( http://www.netcraft.com/survey). When you look at advertisements for Microsoft's Internet Information Server (IIS) you see them tout that they own over half the market in web serving--over half the commercial server market, that is.
I believe the claim about the "commercial server market" refers to business-operated web servers, not to commercial server software. If I'm correct, "almost amusing" would be the introduction making such a silly error.
In fact, reading the introduction -- the whole thing is idiotic. It opens with an anecdote from The Double Helix that not only misspells Max Delbruck's name repeatedly but ascribes a view to Jim Watson that's contradicted by the quote they use. In general, the notion of Watson as a non-competitive sharer is preposterous to anyone who has read the book.
I want to learn principles, then begin to learn a language.
Some advice from a casual, self-trained, hobbyist programmer:
1) You need an itch that has to be scratched. Find something you need, and code it. Outside of a classroom, you need to be extraordinarily self-motivated to learn in the absence of a defined project. Pick something, and *complete* it, despite the unexpeceted directions it will go.
2) Don't worry about principles now. Learn to hack a bit, get some feel for writing working code, and maybe then start working through real CS books. Honestly, half the "programmers" graduating with CS degrees are inert to the underlying principles. You can have plenty of fun without them.
3) For me, Qt/KDE was the tool that made it intuitive to jump from reading about objects and GUI programming to doing it. YMMV, obviously, but I'd recommend that as a place to start. Qt also has *the* best documentation in the open-source world.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, they seem to have fixed it on my end. Google's load time today makes OpenOffice look snappy...
At least Talk Like A Pirate Day is still easygoing fun, but thanks to that interminable Flying Spaghetti business, the joy is being driven even out of pirates.
I'd say the first two Dooms have a lock on that crown.
Forgot to mention: The guy from SlashDong was there. He brought... samples.
Now, there is just no way I'm following that link while at work. Any of you students or unemployed want to tell me what it is? (...shudder...)
If you open the file up in XP, Word will be very confused...
I'm no Windows guru, but I do that all the time in XP, with no problem. (I do, don't I? Checking it ... yeah, of course it works.) The only application I can recall that doesn't follow through "shortcuts" correctly is (brace yourself!) Lotus Freaking Notes. Everything else deals correctly with them, and I'm sure I'd have noticed if they didn't since Notes' misbehavior drives me absolutely nuts.
Like I said, I know nothing about Windows and therefore can't debate the subject, except to report what I see.
The Kansas school board needs to have a single mother assemble their curriculum! As has been documented here repeatedly, single mothers are exempt from copyright law, and attempting to restrain them from copyright violation is a felony!
I did that too, for a science fair project, and finished second to a project about prime numbers. (Summary: there are prime numbers, and you can't factor them by other numbers.) I would have been better off spending that time watching television.
Those people seem not to understand that the clichedness of bragging about not watching television outweighs any positive impression it makes.
Anyway. Not having read the book, but as I understand it from the review -- it seems perhaps unfair to criticize it for not reaching statistically meaningful conclusions. If the argument it's challenging is "Television is moronic and for morons and that's why everyone nowadays is a moron!", it seems like a reasonable counterargument. And it's not like said argument isn't made routinely.
Anyway, whatever the value for programmers, it's counterproductive to tell ordinary desktop users that that's one of the most important benefits for them.
Absolutely. A large part of the problem, I think, is that the noisiest and most prominent Linux "marketing" is zealots who have based their self-image on their choice of software. They represent it poorly because the benefit they get from Linux is not a benefit any, well, healthy person would recognize.
Exactly. The only line of Linux advocacy that's less convincing than "It's not worse than Windows any more!" is "You have the source code so you can fix things yourself!" Sane computer users choose the software they want, not the software they don't hate.
I don't, though, buy:
It's like saying television programming cannibalizes each other which is why we only had four television networks. Well cable came on the scene and we now have 250+ channels of programming that blew a hole right into the side of that market space. You could say that most of those channels are crap, but there's an audience for every single one of those channels. I don't think the people running Home & Garden Network are in any way cannibalizing the Sci Fi channel's audience.
Is he kidding? Of course cable channels have cannibalized the broadcast networks! The 250th channel may not be taking viewers from the 249th, but channels 5-250 sure as hell took viewers from 1-4!
I'm pretty sure that guy gets in trouble, too. They don't just pat him on the head and send the bank teller to prison.
I'm relieved to see the stupider-than-dirt crowd is still around, though.
Good questions, good moderation, good answers. Nice work, all around.
Well, at least that makes more sense than the guy modded above you who thinks this is someone shilling for Intel!
Anyway -- the test files are linked in his post. I don't have OO installed at work, but would someone with it and Office care to take a look at them, and move this discussion to facts?
.
The $99 version calls your girlfriend and tells her you never loved her, then puts out a mafia hit on you.
.
.
(Note: I'm looking for replies based on experience with Japanese reality, not on anime. TIA...)
But I'm thinking Zonk got taken on this one. That VOware link is informative, why?
Incidentally, writing introductory books like "Kiss the Blue Screen of Death Goodbye!" seems to me to be a dead end. Seething haters of Microsoft (and even they haven't seen a BSOD in five years) don't make up a significant share of Windows users, and pandering to that mentality seems counterproductive.
2) This is a firewall in Japan.
3) What PricewaterhouseCoopers uses for tax accounting is not something you want to be doing your taxes with.
Meanwhile, shouldn't employees at a motorcycle leathers maker ride, uh, motorcycles? Or does "motorcycle" nowadays just mean sticking an Orange County Choppers sticker on the rear window of your SUV and going home to watch TV shows about motorcycles?
The real jewel in there, though, is:
Industry can have a negative impact on innovation. The Graphical Image Manipulation Program (GIMP) languished incomplete for a year at beta release 0.9. Its creators, two students at Berkeley, had left school to take jobs in industry, and left their innovation behind.
Curse that capitalism and its suppression of innovation! How dare companies offer jobs to starving open source developers and distract them from their coding!
I believe the claim about the "commercial server market" refers to business-operated web servers, not to commercial server software. If I'm correct, "almost amusing" would be the introduction making such a silly error.
In fact, reading the introduction -- the whole thing is idiotic. It opens with an anecdote from The Double Helix that not only misspells Max Delbruck's name repeatedly but ascribes a view to Jim Watson that's contradicted by the quote they use. In general, the notion of Watson as a non-competitive sharer is preposterous to anyone who has read the book.
Some advice from a casual, self-trained, hobbyist programmer:
1) You need an itch that has to be scratched. Find something you need, and code it. Outside of a classroom, you need to be extraordinarily self-motivated to learn in the absence of a defined project. Pick something, and *complete* it, despite the unexpeceted directions it will go.
2) Don't worry about principles now. Learn to hack a bit, get some feel for writing working code, and maybe then start working through real CS books. Honestly, half the "programmers" graduating with CS degrees are inert to the underlying principles. You can have plenty of fun without them.
3) For me, Qt/KDE was the tool that made it intuitive to jump from reading about objects and GUI programming to doing it. YMMV, obviously, but I'd recommend that as a place to start. Qt also has *the* best documentation in the open-source world.